Proposed pilot program would incentivize student reading with free pizza

Read more books, get more pizza.

The Slice for St. Paul Kids literacy incentive program would do just that, offer students a pizza for meeting their reading goals.

Sponsored by Rep. María Isa Pérez-Vega (DFL-St. Paul), HF5091, as amended, would give St. Paul’s West Side Boosters youth athletic club a one-time $350,000 grant to fund the two-year startup program. It would serve students in kindergarten through eighth grade attending Maxfield, Cherokee Heights, Riverview, and East African Magnet elementary schools and Humboldt secondary school.

“This will help our kids, not just one child, but all groups of different backgrounds reach their potential,” Pérez-Vega told the House Education Finance Committee Thursday. The bill was laid over for possible inclusion in the education finance bill.

The bill would create an exclusive partnership with Slice Brothers Pizza’s two St. Paul locations.

Co-owner Adam Kado said the goal is to get kids to read for at least 10 minutes per day, five days a week. Once students reach 200 minutes of reading in a month, they would be given a voucher for a free eight-inch pizza. He estimates about 1,525 students would participate in the reading program over the two years it would be funded, leading to more than 27 million minutes of total reading.

“If I can give a kid pizza and he can be instantly rewarded for that gratification and he’s reading at the same time … he’s happy and it’s going to incentivize more reading,” Kado said. “With 50% of the kids currently in our public school district in economically disadvantaged households, the benefit is not only to these kids, but their greater communities as well.”

Rep. Ron Kresha (R-Little Falls) praised the bill’s creativity, but said it has “lots of loose ends” and raised several red flags, such as the exclusivity partnership and the transparency of a possible donation to a scholarship program some of the funds would go toward.

Kado said the pizza vouchers are valued at $10 each. Slice Brothers would be reimbursed from the Westside Boosters, and $1 of that would be donated to the Philando Castile Memorial Scholarship program.

“Somebody’s not going to receive this money, and somebody has the potential to appeal that, and what headaches that would create for you,” Kresha said. “I would hate for this to become something negative that hits the newspapers when it was started with great intentions.”

A report on the program would be due the Legislature by Jan. 15, 2027.